Thread by @shashj

James Bowder, the British Army's head of "Futures" and ex commander of @6thUKDivision, gave an interesting & important talk at RUSI's land warfare conference last week, setting out the army's conceptual work on what the "first battle" in a future European war might look like. 🧵

Bowder says army "midway" through exploring "how to deny the adversary his theory of victory in the first battle" in Europe. Currently five lessons: get there fast, survive once there, blunt enemy advance, raid lines of communications & quickly switch from defence to offence.

He says these hypotheses on "foundational approach to warfighting " will be "tested to destruction" during the next six months in war games & red teaming, within the army and across NATO. Talks about "a laser focus on war in that particular rather than the abstract in general".

Getting there fast: "we need...appropriate balance of in-place UK land forces along with extraordinarily high readiness forces over the horizon". Partly good indicators & warnings; partly "years-long engagement" and understanding of plans of country being defended (i.e. Estonia)

Major theme is hiding vs finding contest: "It will become increasingly difficult to conduct ground manoeuvre, given the prevalence of multi-spectral ISR and the sheer weight of enemies' smart and dumb fires....it will be really difficult to survive [and] to prosper offensively."

I explored that theme in my Technology Quarterly in January: economist.com/technology-qua… And especially in the last essay in the package: economist.com/technology-qua…

On AI speeding up kill chains: "This is increasingly going to become a contest of kill chains, where speed to the trigger becomes an important determinant of success. And that targeting cycle is only going to speed up with the integration of cutting-edge artificial intelligence"

"we're now beginning to understand...dispersal is necessary, but it's not sufficient...we also need to deceive, make sure one's forces are appropriately resilient once hit, but most importantly...to aggressively disrupt the adversaries kill chain, hour by hour, day by day"

"this is a constant drumbeat of deliberate operations to degrade adversary ISR [intelligence, surveillance & reconnaissance], to degrade adversary C2 [command & control] and degrade anniversary fires [eg. artillery, rockets, missiles] and the log[istics] chains that support them"

On importance of raiding: "one also needs to in parallel raid [enemy] lines of communication in order to drive culminations, so that his offensive system is entirely dislocated...striking concurrently throughout that depth using not only indirect fires, but also ground manoeuvre"

The information environment: "the first battle will be sure to take place in a goldfish bowl...deception will become far more challenging, surprise will be difficult, and the adversary will seek to exploit and amplify any of our missteps in order to erode support back home"

Urban warfare is clearly pivotal to this vision: "Land power on both sides will be dominated by the competition for urban terrain...towns & cities represent the principal prize...manoeuvre on the ground in between those urban areas takes place amid unprecedented jeopardy"

Why are urban areas key? "[For] defenders because fighting in or from urban terrain is force multiplying and provides the refuge from adversary find-and-strike [ISR?]...towns and cities will be important for attackers because of their symbolic economic & political significance"

All in all, a fascinating bit of insight into the British Army's thinking. Informed, says Bowder, by the lessons of Nagorno-Karabakh, recent wars in Syria and Libya, and Ukraine. And clearly tied concretely to a very specific geography—a major war with Russia, in Europe.